


Hasten Lest The Gate Be Shut

by JoAsakura



Series: The Dark Road [6]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-05
Updated: 2016-11-05
Packaged: 2018-08-29 07:28:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8480839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoAsakura/pseuds/JoAsakura
Summary: N7 Day, 2016In the New Garden, the Gardners and their Guide face an unexpected threat.





	

NEWGARDEN/HOME CLUSTER/THE REMEMBERING

The Guide sat out here, sometimes, at the edge of a cluster at the edge of the Garden, silver hull bathed in the light of an old red star.

The chunk of a Mass Relay jut from the rocky planet's surface like a jagged claw, a reminder of the Old Garden and Cost of the previous' Guide's madness, and the small silver frigate circled it once before settling into a lazy orbit to bask in the sunlight.

In the background of his consciousness was all the data from the fleet. The Firstborn, all grown now, exploring and mapping New Garden with a zeal he frankly found exhausting. Only a small segment of M31 had been covered as they mapped, but already, ten million plus of sentient or soon-to-be species. Cultures and sights wildly different than the ones their shared history recalled.

It was breathtaking.

The law was simple. Lights in the sky. Don't get close enough to be seen. Anything up close is done through hard-light drones, remote bodies a thousand times sophisticated than Shepard or Harbinger's old suits, still sitting in their cases. The drones could shift, pass for any life form, and operate far enough away from the primary shipbody for safety.

It was the most important law. Explore. Learn. Do not engage. _Never_ engage.

(Of the Old Ones who are left, they no longer chafe at the lack of a Harvest. It just takes a look at the golden gash along the Guide's silver hull to remember the battle with Regent and what it had almost cost them all.)

[I thought I'd find you out here.] Nox said over comms, the black destroyer blotting out the light.

"Please tell me you're here to help me sort through some of this data." Shepard said, pushing aside darker thoughts, and stepping back into gestalt.

"Oh absolutely not." Nox stepped beside him, glittering wings twitching. "But I would be remiss as your best friend to not try and get you to take a break for a half a standard and stop brooding over data. The Firstborn know the laws. They're being careful."

"I'm getting paranoid in my old age." Shepard chuckled, gold-scarred face pulling into a faint smile. "But I will always remember the ones who didn't survive the trip and..."

"Please. You're practically a pod yourself." Nox teased gently, linking one of their arms with Shepard's. "But speaking of old age, where's Harbinger?"

"Sleeping." Shepard's smile faltered. Harbinger was the oldest of them all and there were signs that after a billion years, his core was beginning to falter. Just spikes and flickers, but Shepard the man had known mortality with a grim intimacy. It was almost inconceivable to think it applied again now. "Old people need their naps."

"Reach has been working on a new game. They want to eventually unleash a version on the smalls. A scavenger hunt. They're play testing it with the pods right now." Nox said, keeping their tone light.

"Scavenger hunt." Shepard cast a burning blue look at his friend and Nox's compound eyes sparkled.

"The pods find a sculpture with a puzzle built in. They have to figure out the equations ot open the puzzle and figure out what world the materials it was built from were sourced. Then, it leads them to another and another, until they reach a prize." Nox beamed. "Right now, it's just set in the crèche system, and Watcher is making sure it's not too dangerous, but I think it's great."

"You're a proud parent. That's ok." Shepard laughed, then paused as a strange surge of concern lit up along a back channel. "Nox, I'll meet up with you at the crèche. I think Scout needs to talk to me."

"Talk about proud parent." Nox flickered out of view, shipbody peeling off to head for the crèche. [I'll see you soon.]

The virtual corridor shifted to a small room, flickering rainbows dancing on the floor and Shepard knelt on one of the bright cushions as a roiling ball of eyes and wings appeared. "Shepard!" Scout's wings flared in relief.

"Are you alright?" He asked. Outside the arches on his hull twitched with anxiety.

"I'm fine." Scout shimmered. "But I can't have this conversation with you over subspace." A glittering cube of data appeared between them. "Coordinates. Bring Dad." She curled in and out of shape.

"You never call me dad." Shepard muttered as he took the data.

"That's because you're the Guide. I'll call you Dad when you finally retire." Several of the eyes winked at him, a playfulness that Scout definitely didn't feel through their link. He hated when she tried to keep things bottled up. "I'll see you soon." She added and flickered out.

With a sigh, Shepard stood, feeling an ache that ran right through his core. The private room unfolded as he slipped through space, finding the long-dead world that Harbinger lay in silent orbit around.

In their shared world, Harbinger's core was a simple, solid column of black. The former Reaper had chosen to never again reflect the core form of the Leviathan. Shepard couldn't entirely blame him. He lay a silver hand, light pulsing along the red and white stripe on his arm, and watched the black ripple like water.

Within moments, the column unfolded, swirling around Shepard before resolving itself into a hooded figure. The full lips that showed from the depths of the hood were pulled into a frown. "You let me sleep too long. It's been almost a hundred standards."

"I want you to conserve your energy." Shepard burrowed into Harbinger's embrace as he might have centuries before. "I'm not ready for you to go yet."

"My Guide, I cannot leave you on your own. You'll get bored and wander off. Get yourself shot or boarded. Turned into a garbage scow or worse." Harbinger said and Shepard was still never sure if he was joking. Long black fingers closed over his silver shipbody and drew the little frigate in close to Harbinger's enormous hull. "You're not laughing."

"Your pod has requested an audience." Shepard handed the data to Harbinger, watching it vanish into his shadowy bulk. "I'm worried."

"I am too. Scout's too much like you."

 

 

NEWGARDEN/THE ORCHARD

Radiation flickering through the gasses of the small nebula lit it in shades of emerald and amethyst, the colours playing in lazy patterns against Harbinger's hull, and lighting Shepard's with brilliant iridescence.

And through it, he sensed Scout's core output long before she came into visual range. Ten times bigger than Shepard's compact form, but still smaller than even Nox, she came out of cloak, the nebula glowing against her bow wave. She'd dyed her hull a brilliant orange, swirling patterns of incandescent blue constantly twisting under the surface.

Inside their private gestalt, Scout fell into Harbinger's embrace, letting the shadows wrap protectively around her roiling core form. "I'm so glad you're both here." She said. "I.."

"Before you say anything, Harbinger is going to piggy-back you home." Shepard said, bright eyes narrowing. "You've been running at full burn, you're exhausted, and I'm not going to watch you blow a core right in front of me."

"I'm not a pod anymore, I'm.." Scout started, then her wings went limp and outside they watched the arches on her hull sag. "Ugh, fine." She settled against Harbinger's hull as docking clamps extended and took hold with improbable delicacy. "Thanks."

"Ok. Now, you can talk." Shepard stepped closer, and pet one fitful wing.

"It's easier if I show you." And the walls lit up with data. And for the first time in a very, very long time - Shepard blinked and simply said:

"Oh. Fuck."

~~

"That's old garden tech." Shepard said, trying to remember the names of the species. Humans. Asari. Krogan. There had been something. Something mentioned in passing once, a long time ago, to human ears. The Andromeda Initiative.

But there had been a war to fight, there had been sacrifices to be made, and whatever that was had not been Shepard's problem.

And now, here in the New Garden, in M31, in Andromeda. They had an infestation.  
"I'd just started to set up a mapping grid for that sector." Scout fretted. "And then I saw the ships and..."

"I'm thankful Regent's not here, we'd have a bloodbath on our hulls." Shepard rubbed his face, gold and silver glinting in the dim light. "They didn't see you."

"Lights in the sky." Scout huffed. "They didn't see me."

Shepard scrolled through the images, looking at the armour, the clothing. "They probably came in long-sleep ships. If that's the case, then we're looking at smalls who remember the Harvest." He made a long groan.

"What are we going to do, my Guide?" Harbinger asked softly, one dark hand gently stroking Shepard's cheek.

"Have Nox run the numbers, give them a couple of generations worth of space for quarantine." Shepard paced. "Paladin needs to come up with a monitoring system. And we need to figure out what they brought with them."

"You're worried about the Leviathan." Harbinger said suddenly.

"If they have even one of those orbs aboard those ships, they're bringing in an infection that could endanger this entire galaxy." Shepard leaned into Harbinger's touch, his own armoured hands twitching in frustration. "And- if these are Harvest-era smalls, I'm worried about them shooting first and asking questions later if they run across any of the Olds." He added.

Shepard was silent for a moment, then shivered. Harbinger's fingers tightened around his shipbody even as he drew him tighter into their shared embrace. "If they find out about the pods..." He trailed off, blinking, and brought a hand to his face. "They'll.. They'll..."

A trickle of eezo-blue on his fingertips and Shepard's shattered silvery face shuttered. "Because it's what the human Shepard would have done. So. We contain them. And we make sure we don't find ourselves in the middle of another war."

 


End file.
